last night, i went to little joy and in the crowds of bearded men, i kept seeing john. an on and off lover in brooklyn, whose address is stored in my phone as graham and lorimer. i don’t know why i’ve been thinking of john so often. we were never romantically involved, we had a nice friendship where we respected each other’s intelligence, aesthetic tastes and political leanings. i used to meet him with little notice at the restaurants where he tended bar, they always changed from month to month because he would often get fired for being late or for not showing up. he played the guitar and laughed when i said he was talented. he’d disappear for months to live in a cabin without running water or electricity or to build sets in LA. it was horrible, he would say every time he came back. i don’t remember the last time i saw him, he was tall, thin, blonde and brown eyed with a sloping, long nose and had an uncanny, embarrassing resemblance to ryan gosling. he also hated this comparison. for one of our assignations, i brought along a young boy i had picked up at a bar, and john was placidly game. i wrote a story about him a long time ago and couldn’t quite get his otherworldly nonchalance on the page.

the past year, i kept looking for otherthan too, but i never saw the likes of him in this city and probably never will, no matter how many cities i search. he got married to a pneumatic blonde and acquired a stepson. by studying his facebook pictures carefully i have finally figured out the mechanism of his face, how his square jaw perfectly balances his slight pout. he is the only man whose physicality surpassed the doctor’s. for that, i am grateful.

what strikes me as strange and blue these days is how vivid my memories and attachments to these men have become over time. even the most casual alliances have now hardened into bright stones. how did these romances, which started with such frivolity gain so much velocity? and what is left afterwards? after the meet, the gymnastics, the flirtations and the inevitable denouement. i think because we are here, talking, we must be left with what we began: a question.